Ableton Forum

Any advices for programming long evolving gong sounds?

noise, several instances of corpus using plate algorhythm with lots of inharmonics tuned to different frequencies, crash cymbal tuned way down. reverse sample of the girl next door walking her chihuahua.

Not too sure how I'd engineer it myself, but look up Physical Modeling & Comb Filters.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

Check out the sections dealing with cymbals and bells and experiment.

I've gotten some pretty decent gong/deep cymbal sounds using the following method (on a Nord Lead 3, so try to adapt any specific functions as necessary):

Oscillators: 2 FM-modulated sine waves with high FM amount (very noisy tones, but different from a pure noise source). Now use Osc2 to further FM Osc1, with a quick Mod envelope to control the amount of FM- this gives a little fizzy explosion on the attack but the tone mellows a bit as it fades. I used no filter, set amp envelopes to taste for the amount of decay/release you want.

Set 2 slow, unsynched LFO's to control the FM amount in each oscillator. THis gives a nice shimmer as the sound decays.

Now either use a "chord stack" feature or just play chords of non-harmonic intervals to keep the sound from having an identifiable tonality. I have like 6 notes playing at once, a root with a cluster of semitones at the octave and another higher note.

If this is too "thin" you may want to mix in a square wave as a sub (again cluster some notes to avoid tonality). Have fun.

Thanks for your answers.